Importing from Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet?
Getting your log data from Excel (or any other spreadsheet, such as Google Sheets or Numbers for Mac) into Safelog is usually fast and easy thanks to our built-in tools.
If your Excel / Spreadsheets / CSV / TSV / Text file comes from a third party eLog, an airline, or rostering system, try first visiting SafelogWeb.com .. Import/Export and then either "Automatic Import", "Schedule/Roster Import" or any of the other built-in importers there as there's a good chance you may be in luck. We have already prepared code to import hundreds of common formats. You can even try this while in demo mode. If our systems don't recognize your particular file format, you can then use our generic CSV/Excel/Text file importer. And, if that still doesn't work, there's guidance info below to help you tweak what you have so that Safelog can read it.
If your Excel file is relatively clean and straightforward or if you have a CSV file, Safelog will be able to find and read your data
from it and you'll be in the pipeline to where you can match up the logbook fields that you have in excel to fields in Safelog. To try this, go to
SafelogWeb.com ... Import/Export ... CSV/Excel/Text Importer (if you're not there already) and try it! This should work for most people.
If the above doesn't work, your Excel file might need a little tweaking/simplification for our importer to handle it. How to do this
is discussed below.
Tweaking Your Excel File if it can't be imported automatically ...
Here's a video to get you started. Please watch this first:
The information below basically duplicates what's in the video:
Here are the key points:
The goal will be to get your logbook data in Excel into
a very plain format where each column is exactly one field (such as "PIC" or "Date") and each
row is exactly one flight.
To accomplish this, remove any extraneous columns, rows, or formatting (including blank columns and rows and 'headers' that span more than one column/row)
Once that is done, 'Save As' to CSV format. CSV is a plain 'Comma Separated' format.
Do the above three steps and then try re-importing via SafelogWeb's CSV/Excel/Text file importer. The text below expands upon this.
First - what is CSV? Comma-separated Values (CSV) is a widely used file format that
stores tabular data (numbers and text) as plain text. Its popularity and
viability are due to the fact that a great deal of programs and
applications support csv files, at least as an alternative import /
export format. Moreover, the csv format allows users to glance at the
file and immediately diagnose the problems with data, if any, change the
CSV delimiter, quoting rules, etc. All this is possible because a CSV
file is plain text and an average user or even a novice can easily
understand it without any learning curve.
To import your data from excel to Safelog, you should first convert your
Excel worksheet to CSV first and then import the .csv file using Safelog's CSV import tools.
There are two parts to the instructions below. In the first part we'll give step by step instructions how to use "Save As" in excel to convert from Excel to CSV. Chances are, however, that you might already know this. In the lower section, we give some tips as to how to do it right and give you insight into some pitfalls and common errors.
(General Info) How to convert Excel file to CSV
Below you will find the step-by-step instructions to export an
Excel workbook to the CSV format by using Excel's Save As command.
In your Excel workbook, switch to the File tab, and then click Save As. Alternatively, you can press F12 to open the same Save As dialog.
In the Save as type box, choose to save your Excel file as CSV (Comma delimited).
Choose the destination folder where you want to save your Excel file in the CSV format, and then click Save.
After you click Save, Excel will display up to two additional dialogs. Don't worry, these are not error messages and everything is going right.
The first dialog reminds you that only the active Excel spreadsheet will be saved to the CSV file format. If this is what you are looking for, click OK. In normal logbook situations, this should be ok as your logbook should be on one sheet. If your excel file only has one sheet, this dialog will not be shown.
Clicking OK in the first dialog will display a second message informing you that your worksheet may contain features unsupported by the CSV encoding. This is OK, so simply click Yes.
After you've saved your CSV, close Excel entirely and then re-open it from scratch. Use the file... open dialog to open the CSV file that you just created. You should now see that your data is in a plain tabular format.
For import into Safelog..
make sure that the header line at the top is one line and one line only. For example, if you have a "two line header" where for example in the top section it says "Route of Flight" and below that are "To" and "From", edit the file so that there is only one header line and each column has a single descriptive title on the first row only.
make sure that you have not exported any "totals" lines or extraneous stuff. What you should be looking at is a very plain table of data. If your excel file had a totals line at the bottom and this was exported into the CSV file, then there's a chance that you could import this as a "flight" thus effectively doubling your flight hours.
The exact text that is the column of each column header should be descriptive but there's no particular requirement. For example, if you have a column with PIC time you might call it "PIC Time". Later, when you import into Safelog you will be asked to connect columns in your CSV file to columns in Safelog.
Date formats: Excel has a nasty habit of hiding the real format of dates in csv and excel files from you and displaying them in your "System Default" format. What this means is that for example if you load a CSV file into excel which has a column with a European date like "14.03.2017" and you happen to load this into a US machine where the default date format is MM/DD/YY, it might display this date as 03/14/17 to you rather than how it actually is in the file. This can be a source of confusion. An easy way to check this is instead of opening the CSV file in Excel, opening it in a plain text editor like NOTEPAD. This will allow you too see the CSV file as it is without any Excel "helpfulness.
Once you save your log data into CSV format (for example, "john_smith_logbook.csv") then you can take advantage of Safelog's powerful CSV import tools to get your data in.
You may find the link below to be further helpful in the process.
If you have further questions on this topic, we'll be more than happy to answer. We want to make your transition to Safelog as easy as possible and have spent a lot of time making the best CSV import tool so it will be just so. We welcome you to join the many pilots who have successfully transitioned to Safelog, including many who came from Excel-based logbooks.
